"The Trees in Riverdale Park" by Karen Solie

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 27, 2019   The Trees in Riverdale Park   Karen Solie

Diagonal paths quadrisect a square acre white as the page in February.   From the soil of this basic geometry ash, elm, and maple flourish like understandings whose bare logics are visible, understandings the theorem has allowed.   Between roam bodies of the sensible world: people, dogs, all those lovers of the material and immaterial   illumined, as under working hypotheses, by sodium bulbs whose costly inefficiencies Los Angeles and Philadelphia have apparently moved on from.   The trees are grand hotels closed for the season. But belowground, social life is taking place.   As when snow lay on the fields and people descended to rec rooms, secret bars like the Snake Pit in the basement of the curling rink in Golden Prairie. Our big Ford nosing the siding,   we waited for our parents with the engine running, under grave instruction   as radio sent our autonomy bounding toward us, chilling scenarios inspired by the trucking forecast and news items from Great Falls or Bismarck freely imagined, songs that gave us bad ideas and the seeds of a mythology. Ten minutes,   then one hour, two, pop and chips and the gift of the periphery.   I've never understood what "starlit" means.   Even on a clear night in their millions they cast no discernible light into the dark expanse where a farmhouse gestured weakly   and grid roads and bullshit caragana disappeared, where the animals' lives played out, smells travelling slowly, low to the ground.   In Riverdale Park the diagonal walks like diagrams may be said to describe themselves, which is a relief.   Now snow is blowing through the theorem that the understandings broadly accommodate and sensible bodies adjust their collars to,   and even bare spots left by departed cars evidence how the outlines of loss might gradually alter   as experience is filled in by its representation, even if not made peace with.            Copyright © 2019 by Karen Solie. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I wrote the first notes toward 'The Trees In Riverdale Park' while sitting at the window of a house across the street from said park in Toronto, a house my friend had kindly offered to let me stay in while she was away. I was thinking about winter, about where I come from, about how writing experience through the language of memory is a kind of translation. You just try to get at the spirit of the thing." —Karen Solie   Karen Solie's most recent collection of poetry is The Caiplie Caves (Pan Macmillan, 2019). She is an associate director for the Banff Centre's Writing Studio program, and lives in Toronto, Canada. Poetry by Solie   The Caiplie Caves (Pan Macmillan, 2019) "Sakura Park" by Rachel Wetzsteon "The Praying Tree" by Melinda Palacio "Sawdust" by Sharon Bryan September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral   Thanks to Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2020, who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Corral about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible   Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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